The Myth Maker

There's a myth growing around Alan Greenspan. Just a year after he stepped down as Chairman of the Federal Reserve, he's now seen as some kind of financial wizard, economic genius and gifted virtuoso, who delighted in pure mathematics and jazz when he was young. Developing almost into folklore, it's said he learned some Promethean magic from the rational self-interest in Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged and then became the great macroeconomist who engineered the longest period of growth in American history.

For years, whenever he lowered the interest rates, the world gasped "ohhhh," and whenever he injected more liquidity into the markets, we all sighed "ahhhh." But it was all a bunch of bullshit. In reality, he was a man so blinded by the neoclassical money games that he couldn't see the forest through the trees. Despite a flurry of warnings over many decades, he never saw the ecological crisis coming – a changing climate, vanishing salmon runs, beetle infestations and fish disappearing from the seas. All these calamities were mere "externalities" to him – not a part of his world.

He could have been the man who shook up the world of economics. He could have started including ecological measurements into his fiscal calculations, put America's national accounts in order and redefined what economic progress means. But he didn't, and in that sense he is a grand failure, just another money man and bean counter who did not seize the moment. History will not be kind to him.